It looks like OpenGL 4 still supports this way of doing things, but I've noticed that glTexStorage2D() is now used in the OpenGL book I've been reading. It's been stated in my book that this allows for generating mutable textures (format, dimensions, etc). It's a little simpler:

From what I've gathered, this is done for textures that are considered immutable in terms of changing its target, format, dimensions, etc. The data can change, however. As for generating 4 mipmaps... would I have to call glTexSubImage(), and provide 1/4-sized images for each of my mipmaps? It makes sense. I've seen somewhere that I only have to provide the initial mipmap, and I can call glGenerateMipmaps(), or for compatibility, render to FBOs to make this happen. Is this correct?

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Good Evening,
I want to make a 2D game which involves displaying some debug information. Especially for collision, enemy sights and so on ...
First of I was thinking about all those shapes which I need will need for debugging purposes: circles, rectangles, lines, polygons.
I am really stucked right now because of the fundamental question:
Where do I store my vertices positions for each line (object)? Currently I am not using a model matrix because I am using orthographic projection and set the final position within the VBO. That means that if I add a new line I would have to expand the "points" array and re-upload (recall glBufferData) it every time. The other method would be to use a model matrix and a fixed vbo for a line but it would be also messy to exactly create a line from (0,0) to (100,20) calculating the rotation and scale to make it fit.
If I proceed with option 1 "updating the array each frame" I was thinking of having 4 draw calls every frame for the lines vao, polygons vao and so on.
In addition to that I am planning to use some sort of ECS based architecture. So the other question would be:
Should I treat those debug objects as entities/components?
For me it would make sense to treat them as entities but that's creates a new issue with the previous array approach because it would have for example a transform and render component. A special render component for debug objects (no texture etc) ... For me the transform component is also just a matrix but how would I then define a line?
Treating them as components would'nt be a good idea in my eyes because then I would always need an entity. Well entity is just an id !? So maybe its a component?
Regards,
LifeArtist

Hello. I am coding a small thingy in my spare time. All i want to achieve is to load a heightmap (as the lowest possible walking terrain), some static meshes (elements of the environment) and a dynamic character (meaning i can move, collide with heightmap/static meshes and hold a varying item in a hand ). Got a bunch of questions, or rather problems i can't find solution to myself. Nearly all are deal with graphics/gpu, not the coding part. My c++ is on high enough level.
Let's go:
Heightmap - i obviously want it to be textured, size is hardcoded to 256x256 squares. I can't have one huge texture stretched over entire terrain cause every pixel would be enormous. Thats why i decided to use 2 specified textures. First will be a tileset consisting of 16 square tiles (u v range from 0 to 0.25 for first tile and so on) and second a 256x256 buffer with 0-15 value representing index of the tile from tileset for every heigtmap square. Problem is, how do i blend the edges nicely and make some computationally cheap changes so its not obvious there are only 16 tiles? Is it possible to generate such terrain with some existing program?
Collisions - i want to use bounding sphere and aabb. But should i store them for a model or entity instance? Meaning i have 20 same trees spawned using the same tree model, but every entity got its own transformation (position, scale etc). Storing collision component per instance grats faster access + is precalculated and transformed (takes additional memory, but who cares?), so i stick with this, right? What should i do if object is dynamically rotated? The aabb is no longer aligned and calculating per vertex min/max everytime object rotates/scales is pretty expensive, right?
Drawing aabb - problem similar to above (storing aabb data per instance or model). This time in my opinion per model is enough since every instance also does not have own vertex buffer but uses the shared one (so 20 trees share reference to one tree model). So rendering aabb is about taking the model's aabb, transforming with instance matrix and voila. What about aabb vertex buffer (this is more of a cosmetic question, just curious, bumped onto it in time of writing this). Is it better to make it as 8 points and index buffer (12 lines), or only 2 vertices with min/max x/y/z and having the shaders dynamically generate 6 other vertices and draw the box? Or maybe there should be just ONE 1x1x1 cube box template moved/scaled per entity?
What if one model got a diffuse texture and a normal map, and other has only diffuse? Should i pass some bool flag to shader with that info, or just assume that my game supports only diffuse maps without fancy stuff?
There were several more but i forgot/solved them at time of writing
Thanks in advance

Sampling a floating point texture where the alpha channel holds 4-bytes of packed data into the float. I don't know how to cast the raw memory to treat it as an integer so I can perform bit-shifting operations.